Conrad, Joseph | A letter regarding character motivations in The Secret Agent

Conrad, Joseph 

Autograph letter signed ("Joseph Conrad") to Frank Vernon

2 pp. (178 x 232 mm) on paper, single sheet written recto and verso. Oswalds, Bishopsbourne, Kent (author's embossed stationery), 5 November 1919.  

A letter to theatre producer Frank Vernon, regarding his play The Secret Agent and its characters' motivations.

The plot of The Secret Agent is famously complex, and in this wonderfully direct and revealing letter, Conrad outlines the motivations behind some of the stylistic turns in the dramatic adaptation of his novel. Conrad writes: "The repetition you noticed in the fourth part of Act One (Winnie — Mother — Stevie) arise from my anxiety to drive home to the audience the relations of these 3 people to each other — and the particular relation of Winnie to her brother. Unless the pend up passions of maternity is made clear, the last act will seem to the audience a gratuitous atrocity."  

The Secret Agent (1907), whose plot focuses acts of terrorism and anarchism, is perhaps one of Conrad's most nuanced and prescient novels. Though it has always received favorable critical reviews, it sold poorly in its early days, but experienced a spike in popularity upon the eve of World War I. While the narrative was inspired by the Greenwich Bombing of 1894, the novels themes adeptly and eerily anticipate events and sentiments surrounding the First World War.